Local agencies and groups take in over $2 billion in grants

Sample federal grants

Purpose: Grant funding to assist Caltrans in positive train control upgrades from San Onofre to San Diego

Amount: $24.9 million

Recipient: UC San Diego

Purpose: Funding for the Peruvian/Brazilian Amazon Center of Excellence in Malaria

Amount: $1.65 million

Recipient: San Diego Dance Theatre

Purpose: Matching grant to support the group’s “Trolley Dances.”

Amount: $10,000

Sequestration cuts for San Diego County could affect everything from airport construction to “exploring tai chi as a behavioral intervention for heart failure patients.”

Yes, there’s a $386,000 grant for that.

More than $2 billion in grant dollars flow from the federal government to local agencies and groups, for activities ranging from medical research to highway construction, social services to cultural endeavors.

The automatic budget cuts now under way as a result of Congress’ inability to agree upon targeted reductions could cut, eliminate or diminish these grant dollars to local agencies and organizations. Recipients say it’s too soon to know the outcome.

The amounts range from the large ($12 million to the Family Health Centers of San Diego for construction projects) to the small ($40,000 for Native American library services and $35,000 for a “wildlife without borders” project with Mexico).

At the University of California San Diego, grants include $5.9 million for the study of “novel paradigms of diabetic complications” and $2.5 million for Alzheimer’s disease research. At San Diego State, they include nearly $600,000 for “the promotion of physical activity in churchgoing Latinas.”

Grants — research grants in particular — have become an easy target for critics of across-the-board sequester reductions, who argue that Congress should cut them before touching any defense or other high-priority obligations.

“The real question should be raised as to why taxpayer money is used to finance programs such as $550,000 for UCSD research into ‘safer sex intervention for male clients of female sex workers in Tijuana’ when workers are being forced to furlough or take pay cuts and national defense is being reduced,” said Rhonda Deniston, a regional director for the organization Stop Taxing Us. “Crucial, necessary programs being set on the back burner is disgraceful and insulting to each and every taxpayer who themselves have reduced spending and waste in their own personal budgets.”

Researchers point out far-reaching implications of their research, which they said often belies the narrow nature of their titles.

Elva Arredondo, an associate professor of health promotion and behavioral sciences at San Diego State University, is the primary investigator for the “churchgoing Latinas” grant.

The two-year project will introduce physical activity programs and cancer screenings to 420 Hispanic women at 16 local churches and assess the effectiveness of the effort.

Arredondo said the impact will go far beyond Latina churchgoers.

“Addressing potential health problems is going to benefit society as a whole,” Arredondo said. “Something may seem very narrow, but in reality connected to something that is a much larger societal issue, such as obesity.”

Arredondo said grant applications go through a rigorous process in which reviewers scrutinize a project’s scientific merit, feasibility and impact on public health before the grant is approved.

Stanley Maloy, dean of San Diego State’s College of Sciences, said critics will often point to seemingly esoteric grants without realizing their reach. He cited the example in 2008 of then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin criticizing federal grant funding for fruit-fly research.

“Our researchers have investigated the muscle development in fruit flies, and they have used that as a model to understand how muscle development occurs,” Maloy said. “Those results have really big implications in understanding things like human neurological disease.

“These are things that matter to us in real time,” Maloy added about the research programs. “If not directly by affecting our physical health, our mental health or in some other direct way, it affects us indirectly by affecting our pocketbooks.”

UC San Diego and San Diego State officials said they have not yet learned how or if their grants will be affected by the sequester cuts. Other San Diego agencies also aren’t sure, but are preparing.

The program allows for the participants to select a school and program in a medical-related field, with each participant receiving about $7,000 in vouchers to complete their courses, buy books, uniforms and other materials.

The participants typically take courses at local community colleges and for-profit schools such as Pima Medical College and Concorde Career College.

Partnership officials said the grant more than pays for itself by providing welfare recipients with the tools to get jobs in fields with self-sustaining incomes.

“This population has a very difficult time accessing training because they don’t have the resources,” said Cindy Perry, the partnership’s manager of special projects.

“In the end, there is a greater return on investment because these people will no longer need work support and they will be in occupations with self-sustaining resources.”

At least one organization that relies heavily on grant funding said it believes it will be spared.

Catholic Charities receives $6 million annually to provide services for hundreds of international refugees, including $3.8 million to administer a federal program aimed at assisting refugees (mostly Iraqi in recent years) in finding employment.